GEC 2018 Istanbul From Innosance's Perspective
I'd like to share my notes since it was such an event that taught me new things. First of all, I'd like to thank Gozde Kazazoglu Sahin, Tankut Turnaoglu and Procter & Gamble Turkey team who let us participate in the event. Also, a big kudos to Global Entrepreneurship Network and its stakeholders who made this event happen because I believe it contributed a lot to Turkish startup ecosystem even though it was a one shot event.
The first highlight was the inspiration side of the event which is usually missed in most events. Almost all of the speakers inspired us with their stories and views in opening, sessions and workshops. Those with who we are familiar and those who are new to the ecosystem (including a former NASA astronaut Greg Johnson) created a positive climate during the entire event.
Another highlight was seeing how entrepreneurship really became global and ecosystems interact in a fruitful way. The indicator of this fact was having participants from farthest geos such as Far East, Africa, Latin America which we do not frequently host in Istanbul. Furthermore, these participants were standing for different stakeholders of their ecosystems like entrepreneur, investor, and regulators. It was great to see that these stakeholders interacted in the sessions, workshops and even in the breaks.
As a result of this, transition to a multi-centered global entrepreneurship age from the Silicon Valley-centered entrepreneurship was emphasised several times. As Innosance, while we completely agree with this paradigm shift, we keep in our mind that Silicon Valley is the place which still has the largest capital by far. As a con to this situation, the talent in Silicon Valley is quite mobile and has a tendency to move to another company in Bay Area which shakes the startups to the foundation and results in fail stories. On the contrary, I want to share 500 Startups's Enis Hulli's observation which states that Turkey-based and/or Turkish immigrant startups have a high level of employee engagement and loyalty increasing the employee retention rates.
All in all, it was a tasty event. As Innosance, we had fruitful conversations, learned new things, made new contacts that contributed a lot to Innosance's journey of helping startups to get funded and go global. I hope, this event will bring our ecosystem both short and long term benefits and open new gates.
